'The phone of the future'

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 4th dec 2006)

Found this interesting post on The Economist through textually.org - thought it would be a nice add to my 'future .. ' journal.

The phone of the future

The article aims to place the cellphone as the “the remote-control for life”.

Interestingly its author also believes that future devices may interact directly with the brain as I had mentioned in my journal.

Apart from that what is interesting to me is a prediction that storage media may improve so much that ... "In a decade's time a typical phone will have enough storage capacity to be able to video its user's entire life... Researchers at Nokia, meanwhile, speculate that within a decade, the cost of storage will have fallen so far that it might be possible to store every piece of music ever recorded in a single chip that could be included in each phone...". Whoa!

The article ends talking about researchers at Motorola already talking about “the device formerly known as the cellphone” :-)

Interesting.

The changing face of India

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 17th nov 2006)


I am now at a railway station Trivandrum, Kerala, India. I flipped open my laptop and was surprised to find that the place was a WiFi hotspot and I could browse the net. Now such a thing in such a place would have been unthinkable a few years back. So I took a snap from my bluetooth enabled K700 and am posting it straight off the phone and on the railway platform! I love the changing face of India :-)

Featured on CNBC Young Turks

A link to our CNBC feature on YouTube:

The future of commerce in India - the Mobile way?

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 22nd aug 2006)

India seems to be abuzz with new m-commerce initiatives. There have been a few news items recently:

- NGPay an offering from JiGrahak got $2.2 million from Helion Venture...

- PayMate India got around $5 million from Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner...

- mChq a VERY old time entrant, though I wonder why it is not so prevalnt.

- Atom Just found it today.

A few Qs:

1. Is this a trend unique to India?

The reason I ask this is to understand whether the cultural uniquenesss of India has anything to do with it. Unlike in US or Europe, Indians are known to live on their savings rather than on credit. Also India appears to be much more 'mobile savvy'. So what investors might see is a sizeable chunk of a 111 million (current subscriber base) strong potential mobile payment users! - Sounds good and sounds easier to reach than the same number of credit card users.

2. Is anyone really addressing / is concerned about the security and audit aspects of these transactions?

3. What happened to / could anyone throw a light on how PayPal's mobile payment service is doing?

4. And finally - is the future of commercial transactions going to be mobile? Will the mobile be the sole wallet that people will carry around?

Going by these trends, I think countries like India are well poised to use m-commerce in a significant way unless some disrupting technology comes along to challenge it.

B2BC - the ultimate future of communications.

(Originally published on my w2forum journal on 3rd aug 2006)

This might sound a bit too far fetched, but I have been a firm believer in a concept that the future of communications, mobile communications- to be precise, is going to be device form factor agnostic , ubiquitous and pervasive.

I am amazed by the advances in man-machine interfaces and in the knowledge that we are on the threshold of graduating to a higher form of interface - neural. In the future, we will no longer be using key-pads to dial in numbers or even play games! The screen itself will be redundant - we will 'see' in our mind. I call this B2BC, brain-to-brain communication- almost telepathy.

I am imagining a few typical use-cases:

1. Just think of whom you want to communicate with, close your eyes(?) and you would be able to communicate at the speed of thought. Perhaps, even see through the other person's eyes, and even feel the other person's emotions!


2. Or, say you suddenly fall ill. All you have to do is think of your doctor! And the doctor gets a sense that you are in distress and more importantly - can feel your pain! Diagnosis will be real-time and probably the paramedics would already be on your door-step before you can realize.


3. Immersive MMORPGs. Most youngsters of that time will live most of their lives 'in' a virtual world - Matrix style ;-). The 'gaming' experience would be as close as it gets to reality. Many people would need special therapies to help them differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Check out these links to get a feel of what I was ranting:

1. CNN Money. Surfing the Web with nothing but brainwaves.

money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/googlebra...

2. CNN Money. Google on your brain.

money.cnn.com/2006/07/26/technology/futureoft...

3. BBC News. Brain sensor allows mind-control.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5167938.stm

4. Cyberkinetics neural interface system.

www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/medicalprodu...

5. Cyberkinetics brain-computer 'platform'.

www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/technology/p...

What do you feel about these developments?
What about ethics? Who controls what?
Do you think this is the ultimate future of communications?

Duh

I dont know what to do with my blackspace. Just checking this out :-)